New York/Washington: The Trump administration has said it will conduct a “rigorous” re-examination of all Green Cards issued to immigrants from “every country of concern” in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard service members by an Afghan national.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow said that President Donald Trump has “directed a full-scale, rigorous re-examination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern”.
“The protection of this country and of the American people remains paramount, and the American people will not bear the cost of the prior administration’s reckless resettlement policies,” Edlow said in a post on X.
The policy guidance is effective immediately and applies to requests pending or filed on or after November 27, 2025.
In a statement, the USCIS said that in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard service members in Washington DC Wednesday by Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the agency has issued new guidance allowing for “negative, country-specific factors” to be considered when vetting aliens from 19 high-risk countries.
These countries are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Burundi, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Yemen.
These are the same countries that were subject to a travel ban announced by Trump in a proclamation issued in June this year.
The proclamation ‘Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats’ restricted and limited the entry of nationals of these into the US and applied to both immigrants and non-immigrants.
The new guidance came in the wake of the tragic shooting of US Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and US Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24.
Trump announced Thursday during a call with service members on Thanksgiving that Beckstrom had died of her injuries. Wolfe remained in critical condition.
Lakanwal, 29, had arrived in the US through a Biden-era immigration programme called ‘Operation Allies Welcome’ for Afghan nationals fleeing their country after the August 2021 Taliban takeover.
The USCIS said that its new guidance comes after the Trump administration halted refugee resettlement from Afghanistan and the entry of Afghan nationals in its first year of office.
“My primary responsibility is to ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” Edlow said. “This includes an assessment of where they are coming from and why.”
Edlow said Wednesday’s horrific events make it abundantly clear the “Biden administration spent the last four years dismantling basic vetting and screening standards, prioritising the rapid resettlement of aliens from high-risk countries over the safety of American citizens”.
He added that effective immediately, he is issuing the new policy guidance that authorises USCIS officers to consider country-specific factors as significant negative factors when reviewing immigration requests.
The updated guidance will allow USCIS officers to more meaningfully assess whether an alien is a threat to public safety and national security.
Trump has described the shooting as a “terrorist attack”. To a question that Lakanwal had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan and had been vetted, Trump said the person “went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts. And that happens too often with these people”.
Trump, showing a picture of Afghan nationals huddled in a military airplane and being brought to the US after the Taliban takeover, said “look, this is how they come in, this is how they’re standing on top of each other, and that’s an airplane. There was no vetting or anything. They came in unvetted. And we have a lot of others in this country. We’re going to get them out, but they go cuckoo”.
PTI
